Florence and the Machine review: Rage and hope while dancing barefoot

A rarity occurred at the outset of the Florence and the Machine concert Friday at the United Center. Florence Welch stood still.

The singer drifted down a flight of stairs to her microphone and, as she sang the wrenching “June,” looked positively stoic. But after four minutes, enough was enough. Welch exploded into motion, twirled to meet her audience face to face at the lip of the stage, then skipped away, a barefoot blur of flowing hair and a gauzy gown. Welch doesn’t just sing the songs, she embodies them, jutting out her shoulders, punching the air in tandem with the drums, tossing her hair as if she were a Slayer fan.

The aerobic workout included several leaps up and down an array of stairs, and a sprint through the audience, all while singing “Delilah,” a break-up song recast as a gender-bending biblical tale.

When she paused to address the audience, the British singer sounded like a breezy hippie, but her words held a steely resolve. Much of her music has been about struggle, including songs such as “Between Two Lungs” cast in the garb of an Elizabethan madrigal with harp and violin. Little wonder she briefly donned a flowery headband later in the set, a gift from a fan.

An eight-piece band with double-drummer rhythm section delivered tribal thump and rock guitar dynamics. Welch brought a dramatic flair that built on the foundation of muses such as Patti Smith (extolled in the turbulent “Patricia”) and Kate Bush. The concert itself took on the flavor of a gospel service with Welch testifying in a call and response with her congregation, the songs fashioned as a Gothic battle between light and dark.

She urged women not to censor themselves, to translate hope into action. And then she turned to their male counterparts. “If you’re here, you probably really believe in women,” she said. “Rage with us.”

Welch funneled that rage through older, more elaborate songs such as “Queen of Peace,” which translated a fractured romance as a Medieval epic. But after a decade-long career in which Welch has released a series of chart-topping albums, she dialed down the fantasy imagery considerably on her latest release, “High as Hope.” The songs culled from that album provided some of the more powerful moments Friday.

The folk feel, almost like a Gaelic drone, that pervaded the opening bars of “Patricia” opened up into a chant of “I believe her,” and connected it with the the #MeToo movement. The wound exposed in “What Kind of Man” was expelled in a rock flourish. And the elegiac “The End of Love” swept up in a swirl of rich harmonies set against stately piano chords. It also provide another rare moment where Welch wasn’t in motion. In a show that barely paused for breath, the singer telescoped everything down to the sound of her unwavering voice.